Day 9

The Cruella De Vil Wannabe

 

"Each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed, Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death."

 

James 1:14-15

 

Once I had to clean out a house that had way too many dogs living in it. It's hard to say how many dogs there were because they didn't line up to be counted.

 

The church I grew up in had a rent house. The church had bought property that it had future plans for that had a house on it. Since the property and the house were not needed at that time the house was rented out to this guy. After a while it became apparent that the man had too many dogs living with him. The church tried to handle it peacefully, but it came down to the man being evicted. The dogs also had to be evicted. The dog catcher was called out and he began to collect dogs. For some reason the number 52 sticks in my mind. That may not be accurate, but I guarantee you it was a lot of dogs.

 

As the final 3 or 4 dogs were being round up, my friend and I were called in for clean-up duty (make that clean-up doody). We were young, in college and expendable. The man who had been evicted showed up and hassled the dog catcher. The dog catcher called the cops who hauled the man away as the dog catcher hauled the dogs away.

 

My friend and I headed into the house armed with shovels, brooms and a garden hose. It was incredibly bad. You could only work in the house for as long as you could hold your breath and then you had to rush for an open window. Though the dogs lived in the house, none of them were house broken. I'm not even sure that the man was house broken.

 

How do you get to a place where you are living with 52 dogs that have pooped all over the place? We couldn't even breath in the place, yet the man ate and slept there. How do you decide that living with 52 dogs is a good idea? What went wrong? Was he traumatized by 101 Dalmatians as a child? Did he have a Cruella De Vil fixation? I can just see it:

 

Little Timmy and his mom sat in the theater as the credits to 101 Dalmatians began to roll. All the other children and parents were leaving but little Timmy sat there with tears running down his face. His mother asked, "What's wrong Timmy?"

"It's Cruella De Vil, Mom. Why did they have to be so mean to her?"

"But Timmy, Cruella wanted to hurt the puppies."

"Not you too, Mom. You don't understand...I hate Pongo!"

Timmy's mom was suddenly glad everyone else had left the theater. She took Timmy by the hand and as they slowly walked out the theater she could hear Timmy softly singing, "Cruella De Vil, Cruella De Vil. If she doesn't scare you no evil thing will."

 

Okay, it probably didn't happen exactly like that. The man probably never sat out to live in absolute filth with 52 dogs, it just happened over time. First it is 2 or 3 dogs and then one day you don't use the pooper scooper. You get used to the smell, you get more dogs and before you know it you've got more poop than a zoo and enough dogs to enter several teams in the Iditarod.

 

In James 1 we are told, "Each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death." (James 1:14-15) It happens to all of us, something that starts out small turns into one big sinful problem. Most of us don't do it in such spectacular fashion as the guy with the dogs, but we do it. We don't have a growing pack of dogs, we have a growing pack of pride or gluttony. Whatever our problem may be, the result is the same. We need our house cleaned up.

 

Upon Further Review:

 

Read James 1:13-18

 

• What is the root of temptation?
• When sin is full grown what does it give birth to?
• Through what does the Father give us birth?
• What is the result of that birth from the Father?